Aron Meystedt, Director of the Domain Name and Intellectual Property Department at Heritage Auctions, announced that his company is brokering Black.com. I don’t see a ton of high value domain names like this one come on the market regularly (especially with an asking price listed), so I wanted to share what Aron wrote:

I am proud to announce that Heritage Auctions (HA.com) is the exclusive seller of Black.com, a name that has never been available to the public.

The asking price is $750,000 and it is a sure fit for a major brand waiting to be launched. Few names carry the “punch” that Black.com does. Jet.com comes to mind. Black.com could be a brand with an “exclusivity” feature.

Email me if you have interest. Please, NO brokers. We aren’t looking for co-brokerage deals right now. If you are a broker and have a buyer with a budget of $750,000 – let me know. But we don’t want the name sent out to your mailing list please.

I recently published an article with a list of color .com domain names that publicly sold. Based on the domain names that previously sold and on current market trends, I think $750k is most certainly a reasonable price for a domain name of this quality.

I am sure there are companies that have “Black” as their brand names who would love to own this domain name. I would presume there are startups that would love to have the “Black” branding and Black.com domain name to go along with it.

The one challenge with listing a domain name like this for sale with a BIN price is that many buyers don’t like to pay the “list” or “asking” price when a domain name goes up for sale. If I were a betting person, I would bet that Heritage Auctions will find a buyer for this valuable domain name. It feels like the price is right.

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While the name is probably worth FAR MORE than the asking price, it should be pointed out that in the USPTO site (alone) there are 6,806 (!) – live – trademarks/applications on file that have the word “Black” in them.

Plus for a TM holder buying the domain, likely a minus for a non-TM holder. With 6806 apps on file; what use will a non-trademark holder be able to use? Great buy for a TM holder, but knowing Black & Decker, they will file a UDRPlol…

If you go back, and listen to a old sherpa show maybe 2 months back, Andrew said he tried to buy black.com for a client, and offered many millions, and they said they were so insulted they did not want to even counter?

In your case it would seem that you generally would not, hence my mention. I’m confident many would, however, especially given the combined implication of what I’ve posted here about this and what Ryan has posted here. In fact I can name at least one well known domain blogger whom I’m confident wouldn’t even let most of it appear in the first place. But perhaps you would give me another “no idea know what you’re talking about” as in the previous thread, ay? 😉 That I’m confident you would do, unless perhaps I posted that I’m confident you would. 😉

For all I know, the $750k number could be an asking price to induce higher bids, much like a house that is listed for less than the market price will generally see bids above and beyond the list price.

I think this is the Sherpa show you were referring to: http://www.domainsherpa.com/review-20161128/
From transcript:
“Andrew: We had a client that wanted to buy black.com â€” a very, very serious client. And he went up to $10 million dollars on black.com and rejected. We flat out rejected and was told it wasnâ€™t even worth a counter offer. And so I donâ€™t think that thatâ€™s unreasonable to say. I mean I think that orange.com is possibly even better than black.com. Although, BLACK, it does have a certain luxury quality to it, of course.”

Logic says why would someone who scoffed at $10M, be selling the domain for $750K today? Even if they went back to the $10M buyer with $1M you would think they would jump. Something just doesn’t add up in that sense.

Clearly Aaron is saying if you have $750K the domain is up for grabs. Not even an auction.

Ryan,
Of course it would make no sense turning down $10m and then selling it for $750k, I had already got that.
I think there is something missing in this picture … IMHO someone lied, you have just to find out who did … 🙂

This is not only an offense to a great domain like that, but when people do things like this – including passing the tray of Kool-Aid for everyone else to drink and declaring how nice the emperor’s clothes look – they are really screwing everyone in the industry, especially those who haven’t made it and been as fortunate as those at the top.

Heritage Auctions confirmed that they did sell Black.com and one week later Andrew Rosener has confirmed that he is brokering Black.com. Obviously an investor bought the name is now searching for a buyer. I bet Rosener’s own company bought the name and is looking to flip it. It won’t look to good if Rosener resells it for a bigger number when the name was just with a broker. I bet it flips in less than two months for at least a few million.

Who knows if the original owner only wanted X amount within a short period of time and maybe that’s why it sold cheaper then what we thought it was worth. I will go out on a limb and say American Express buys the name for their Black Card brand.

“I bet Rosenerâ€™s own company bought the name and is looking to flip it”

If you did a Whois lookup, you would see that another domain investor owns it. I have gone head to head with that other investor in various auctions, and he is not associated with Andrew’s company (to my knowledge), although Media Options is now brokering it.

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